


They Don't Love You Like I Love You

by Ebyru



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Pre-Slash, Psychological Drama, Spoilers, Time Travel Fix-It, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21678787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ebyru/pseuds/Ebyru
Summary: Now that Steve can travel to the past, he knows where to go and what to do. He won't make the same mistakes.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter & Steve Rogers
Kudos: 19





	1. Save Him

**Author's Note:**

> I was not happy with the Avengers: Endgame ending for Steve. I decided to write my own. Also, I was trying to get back in the writing game since I've graduated from uni finally. lol
> 
> Not beta'd so all mistakes are my own. If anyone would like to offer, send me a shout.  
> Also, if there's any interest I'll continue because I have other parts in mind. :)
> 
> Btw, title is from "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- oldie but goodie.

The whirring of the machine still rings in Steve’s ears, but it worked. He’s back in his time, back in Brooklyn, back to when he took the serum and Bucky wasn’t a brainwashed soviet supersoldier out to kill him..Back to when life made sense and the bad guy was easy to point out. It was the guy openly trying to destroy life with selfish reasoning to back it up.

Steve spends more time than he needs to strolling in his old neighbourhood, mind boggling at the low prices and the quietness of it. The stillness he wish could be recreated in the New York he knows well enough now. But you can’t change the future -- not that much, at least. 

The training camp is just where he remembers. Peggy waving at him as he approaches the entrance. Her eyes still glitter when she sees him, despite the shock of his transformation having passed. It’s just a Steve thing, he guesses; he hopes. Her brown hair is tucked slightly behind an ear, and for a second he wants to move it over her ear. He wonders, briefly, why that bothers him so much. 

His mind catches up with what she’s telling him - what the colonel has asked her to convey, in other words. He arrived late, so she offered to tell him. This is all familiar, though different from the perspective of having done it already. Reliving the mission to destroy Red Skull’s base reminds Steve why he’s here. He told Bruce he would be right back and wouldn’t change anything.

Steve lied. 

\---

Finding Bucky is easier than the first time since he now knows where he’s strapped and how long until the building will self-destruct because of Red Skull and Dr. Zola. Steve fights his way through as easily as the first time, in the past, and runs faster to Bucky’s side this time -- after saving the boys, and giving Dum Dum clearer guidelines. 

The building doesn’t explode. Morita and Falsworth make sure of it. Dernier is outside smoking when Steve comes out with Bucky’s arm around his shoulder. A slew of men are cheering, not unlike how they did when he walked them back to camp in the past. He does it again for old time’s sake. 

This time, though, he doesn’t miss the way Bucky’s smile falls off his face when he turns to appreciate the cheers and howls from the saved soldiers. That smile disappeared for so long after he was taken by Hydra. Steve is intent on saving it this time around. 

\---

Steve, Bucky and Gabe swing from a zip-line and land on the Hydra train as planned. Gabe stays on the roof to keep guard of any agents that could try to sneak up on them, and he does it well. Gabe reminds him a lot of the people who work for Black Panther; he would have liked meeting T’Challa. 

Once inside, Steve follows through with how it goes. Bucky is separated from him by doors that Zola controls to weaken them as a team. In the past, it resulted in Bucky falling to his ‘death.’ But Steve knows death would have been kinder than the brainwashing and torture Bucky lived with during his captivity. Steve shakes the fear of that reoccuring away. He won’t let it happen. It won’t happen. It’s not happening because Steve has an edge this time; he knows how it goes. He knows who’s at fault.

And, deep down, he was at fault. He thought for certain the giant hydra agent with blasters strapped to his body was passed out, so he left him and went to help bucky. Bucky, the kind and brave soul that he is, leapt to Steve’s aid and ended up hanging from the train after the blasters struck him and the shield. 

Steve cringes when that image springs to mind once more. Bucky desperately clinging to the bar, dangling over a massive crevasse in the mountains, while all Steve could do was shout for his hand and reach with his arm, hoping he could make it longer somehow. Of course, that isn’t how serums work. Strength and speed didn’t help him when it came to it. 

The man with the blasters nearly gets Steve this time, a shot bouncing past his shoulder as he dreads watching Bucky fall again. This won’t do. Using Natasha’s training, he flips over the hydra agent, grapples him to the ground and wrestles the blaster pack from his arm by breaking his elbow. Steve can’t go about this nicely. A broken bone is nothing like what Bucky will go through otherwise.

With his thigh, Steve smashes the agent in the face as he screams from the break. And he’s unconscious. Steve checks. He makes sure this time. The agent’s heart rate is low but there. Steve takes the blasters with him in case, and rushes to Bucky’s side of the train. 

Zola has Bucky with his arms up, a gun pointed to the back of his skull. Steve cannot breathe, cannot see beyond how terribly this situation could turn. His chest is heaving; Zola grins like he can read his thoughts.

“Captain America, so unwise of you to leave your poor friend behind. And how rough you were with my agent. I thought you were more...respectable than that.” Zola laughs softly, nudging the back of Bucky’s head with the gun when he tries to shift away.Bucky swallows with a gulp.

“It’s okay, Buck, don’t do anything stupid. We can get out of this,” Steve says as calmly as he can. His heart pounds like war drums, his eyes watering. He feels it; he sees it. 

Zola tuts at them when they try to communicate through their eyes. Bucky tells Steve to blast Zola, and Steve shakes his head minutely; he doesn’t want to hurt Bucky by accident. Bucky narrows his eyes at him. “Do it,” he mouths. Bucky always was braver than him. He didn’t need the serum for that. 

Zola presses the hammer back on the gun, and it’s now or never. Steve blinks twice at Bucky, hoping he gets the message. He presses the blaster pack and shoots. He aims to the right so Bucky can dodge left and slip under the shot as well as any bullet that might come his way. It’s a split-second moment, slow enough in Steve’s adrenaline-fueled view that he sees Zola’s eyes widen in disbelief. He can’t react fast enough to shoot Bucky. He flies backwards with a thud, knocking his head against weapon containers, and the gun slides towards Bucky’s feet. 

They both stare at it. They both breathe out in relief when no shots come out accidentally. Bucky picks it up and holds it out in case of other surprises. There aren’t any. Steve knows all the rest. 

\---

Steve forgets that he has to end up in the ice.


	2. Now what?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has to decide whether to stay in his time, or let history run its course and end up in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as the first chapter was vague and not really the point of this story, I figured I should write another to show what kind of tone would be coming. 
> 
> Let me know if there's interest for more ;)

There’s a dilemma in the shape of a man standing in front of Steve. He wipes his eyes, wondering not for the first time if this version of Bucky is still sane and happy the way he was in the 1940s, and not brainwashed into being a murderer. (A bit belatedly Steve remembers that if Bucky never becomes the Winter Soldier, he also won’t be killing Stark’s parents.)

Steve sits up in his army cot, smiling when Bucky takes a seat next to him. He almost wants to press his fingers into his arm, make sure it isn’t metal still. Just confirm this isn’t some elaborate dream. 

“Why’re you lookin’ at me like I’ve got two heads?” laughs Bucky. He prods Steve in the chest with more force than he would have in the past.

“Maybe you do,” jokes Steve, “and I just haven’t had the nerve to tell you what Hydra was doing in the lab.” He regrets it as soon as he says it, but Bucky grins at him regardless, taking it in stride.

“Oh, sure. ‘Cause two heads would certainly make me a killing machine.” Bucky bumps his shoulder against Steve, and all he can do is wonder at how light it is compared to the metal. How much more human Bucky feels. “But seriously, your face is making these weird folds that I’ve never seen on you. Who died?”

Steve clears his throat. “I just…” He’s not going to hide it from his best friend, the person he’s almost died for on multiple occasions -- past and future alike. “I have a tough decision to make and I don’t know where to start.”

Bucky sobers immediately, his back straightening and his brows creased. He nods a few times, breathing out. “Okay, let’s work through it together.” How Steve ever lived without Bucky helping him this way, being the one with all the bravery and solutions, he doesn’t know. “Does this have to do with ending the war?”

It’s just like Bucky to catch on this quickly. For someone who spends most of his downtime chasing skirts, he sure is quick on the uptake when it’s about serious matters. Maybe it has something to do with whatever Hydra was testing on him before steve arrived. Steve wants to throttle himself for thinking of that image again: Bucky with his eyes glassy, his body pliant and his mind lost in a daze of chemicals. 

“Yeah, it does.” Steve looks down at his hands. The skin of his knuckles tore more before the serum. Now it would take dozens of punches for that to happen -- the kind of punches Winter Soldier threw at him in a not-so-distant time.

“Hey, hey, buddy, it’s okay,” soothes Bucky, rubbing Steve’s shoulder. “I’m here, we can figure it out.” The tear lands on his stiff, whitening knuckles, still wringing together. “If the war needs you to die, I’m not okay with that. We can win it some other way.”

Steve looks up at Bucky, awed by his soft words, the lack of humour in them. “What if there’s no other way?” It was never meant to come out; it was supposed to be a personal thought, a realization he wouldn’t voice to his best friend. Bucky’s didn’t need to know about his seventy year slumber when he had been broken and remade again and again and again...there was no comparison.

Steve would not have been okay with that either; not if he had some way of knowing.

Bucky forces Steve to look at him, by pushing on his shoulder. “Listen, Cap, they wouldn’t spend all their science-y stuff and money on you only to let you throw it away like that. I dont know who you are, but i want steve back. You know that little guy who wouldn’t give up even when he was beaten and bloody? Yeah, him!” bucky pokes steve hard in the chest. “And if you think for a second i’ll let you go down without me, you’ve got another thing coming, pal.” 

With no words to express how grateful Steve is, he simply nods. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Plus, I still gotta get you to dance with some dames,” Bucky says with an exaggerated wink. “I bet they’ll be swarming you like flies now that you’re Captain America.” He smiles but it never quite shines light into his eyes, that same sad gleam from back at the camp when everyone cheered for him.

Steve can’t quite pinpoint what it means, what he means to Bucky, so he tells him everything -- starting with Bucky’s ‘death’ and revival thanks to Hydra.

**Author's Note:**

> comments always appreciated but not mandatory :)


End file.
